is estimate of his
companion's character. Raoul was on the stage, his part was to be
played; his assurance returned to him; his cheating, lying nature
assumed the ascendant, and stifled any better feeling in his heart.

"This misfortune is the last I shall ever suffer, mother!"

Mme. Fauvel rushed toward him, and, seizing his hand, gazed searchingly
into his eyes, as if to read his very soul.

"What is the matter? Raoul, my dear son, do tell me what troubles you."

He gently pushed her from him.

"The matter is, my mother," he said in a voice of heart-broken despair,
"that I am an unworthy, degenerate son! Unworthy of you, unworthy of my
noble father!"

She tried to comfort him by saying that his errors were all her fault,
and that he was, in spite of all, the pride of her heart.

"Alas!" he said, "I know and judge myself. No one can reproach me for
my infamous conduct more bitterly than does my own conscience. I am
not naturally wicked, but only a miserable fool. At times I am like an
insane man, and am not responsible for my actions. Ah, my dear mother,
I would not be what I am, if you had watched over my childhood. But
brought up among strangers, with no guide but my own evil passions,
nothing to restrain me, no one to advise me, no one to love me, owning
nothing, not even my stolen name, I am cursed with vanity and unbounded
ambition. Poor, with no one to assist me but you, I have the tastes and
vices of a millionnaire's son.

"Alas for me! When I found you, the evil was done. Your affection, your
maternal love, the only true happiness of my life, could not save me. I,
who had suffered so much, endured so many privations, even the pangs of
hunger, became spoiled by this new life of luxury and pleasure which
you opened before me. I rushed headlong into extravagance, as a drunkard
long deprived of liquor seizes and drains to the dregs the first bottle
in his reach."

Mme. Fauvel listened, silent and terrified, to these words of despair
and remorse, which Raoul uttered with vehemence.

She dared not interrupt him, but felt certain some dreadful piece of
news was coming.

Raoul continued in a sad, hopeless tone:

"Yes, I have been a weak fool. Happiness was within my reach, and I
had not the sense to stretch forth my hand and grab it. I rejected a
heavenly reality to eagerly pursue a vain phantom. I, who ought to have
spent my life at your feet, and daily striven to express my gratitude
for your lavish ki